But, is it asked, how is this to be remedied? I answer, very easily! Since those who possess the accumulated wealth of the country have filched it by legal means from those to whom it justly belongs—the people—it must be returned to them, by legal means if possible, but it must be returned to them in any event. When a person worth millions, dies, instead of leaving it to his children, who have no more title to it than anybody else’s children have, it must revert to the people, who really produced it. Do you say that is injustice to the children? I say, No! And if you ask me how the rich man’s children are going to live after his death, I answer, by the same means as the poor man’s children live. Let it be remembered that we have had simple freedom quite long enough. By setting all our hopes on freedom we have been robbed of our rights. What we want now is more than freedom—we want equality! And by the Heaven above us, earth’s growing children are going to have it! What right have the children of the rich to be born to luxurious idleness, while the children of the poor are born to, all their lives long, further contribute to their ease? Do they not in common belong to God’s human family? If I mistake not, Christ told us so. You will not dispute his authority, I am sure. If, instead of preaching Christ and him crucified quite so much, we should practice his teaching a little more, my word for it, we should all be better Christians.
And when by this process all the land shall have been returned to the people, there will be just as much of it, and it will be equally as productive, and just as much room on it as there is now. But instead of a few people owning the whole of it, and farming it out to all the rest at the best possible prices, the people will possess it themselves in their own right, through just laws, paying for its possession to the government such moderate rates of taxes as shall be necessary to maintain the government.
But I may as well conclude what I have to say regarding railroads, which must also revert back to the people, and be conducted by them for the public benefit, as our common highways are now conducted. Vanderbilt, Scott & Co. are demonstrating it better and better every day that all the railroads of the country can be much more economically and advantageously conducted under one management than under a thousand different managements. They imagine that very soon they will have accomplished a complete consolidation of the entire system, and that by the power of that consolidation they will be able to control the government of this country.